I apologize I haven't been posting lately. School will be over in one week (actually four days!) and I promise to be more active on here. One of my goals for the summer is to connect with writing and blogging more, as it's a creative outlet that brings me a lot of happiness. But only when I make time for it! Meanwhile, here are a few links to inspire over the next week:

I'm fascinated by simple, effective ways to do inquiry-based teaching. I liked this article, on why it's not always important to name everything we find in the natural world.

Super cool! The first school district to embrace climate literacy. Maybe I should go teach in Portland.

I don't know much about John Muir, but I'd like to know more, and I always see his quote "The mountains are calling" all over my Pinterest boards. Adventure Journal delves into what the quote actually means.

Hooray for the new food labels! They now have to show explicitly how much added sugar is in packaged foods. Serving sizes will also be changed to more accurately reflect the amount people eat.

Ah spring. My favorite season. Yes, I know that fall has changing leaves and that crisp autumn smell. But spring is filled with blooming flowers, and sprouting gardens, and hope. Here are some hopeful links to share with you this morning...

A beautiful story on why we should be able to walk through our country, and how absurd it is that we can't.

Rewild your life: a 30-day challenge. I signed up to do this challenge to spend 30 minutes in nature each day, but realized that it's near impossible during the school year. Fortunately, next month is the end of the school year! So I'll start it up then.

One of my all-time favorite bands is Cloud Cult. Their songs, shows, and albums are filled with so much beauty and emotion. Their lead singer, Craig Minowa, did an interview on the show On Being. I love everything he talks about, and also his midwestern accent.

I love leisurely Saturday mornings. They usually result in me drinking too much coffee (so warm and tasty!) and attempting to read the whole internet. So here is some weekend inspiration to share:
Have I mentioned my obsession with the Running on Om podcast? I can't get enough of it. Try this episode on feminine fierce, or this one on falling in love with your running, or this one on the intersection of running, nutrition and intuition.

I'm trying to get better at journaling every day. I've figured out a good way to meditate in the morning (just two minutes, right before breakfast), but haven't been able to fit journaling in my daily routine. This gives some good inspiration to find the time:

When you become a better listener to yourself, you become a better listener to others.

This soft quiet practice initiates the nurturing of your inner teacher, who happens to be pretty benevolent, empathetic and compassionate. You’ll start to be more lenient on yourself and that will trickle down to others because you’ll realize that we’re all doing the best we can with the tools we have.

In an effort to bring curiosity and joy back into the elementary school classroom, I decided to start a series called 50 Ways to Bring Wonder into the Classroom. I hope to keep these ideas simple and easy to implement for the time-crunched teacher. Most of these ideas come from other teachers, blogs, and books – so I don’t claim credit for them! Click here to see previous posts in the series. And without further ado, here is the next idea!

9. Educate your students' families on how to connect with nature.

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Rachel Carson, when she says "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder... he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in."

The quote inspires me to be that adult, the one with whom my students can explore the world and marvel at its mysteries. I do everything I can to make room for joy and wonder in the classroom. But let's be real - there isn't enough time in the school day to do it right. The pressures of academic expectations in kindergarten (or any grade) are way too high to really let my students spend the optimal amount of time exploring the outdoors. I am lucky if I get in 30 minutes a day of unstructured time for my students, plus a few science lessons outside each week.

But this is where I turn to my students' families - after all, they are the ones who spend the most significant amount of time with their children, long after the kindergarten year is over. Why not help them learn to bring joy and wonder into their children's lives? Yes, families are busy, and many may not be receptive to pushes from their child's teacher to find time for playing outside. But I believe strongly in the importance of connecting children with nature, so it's worth every attempt at involving my students' families to do just that.

There are lots of ways to involve families. I run the garden committee at my school, which has parents and community members on board for planting and growing the garden. We also encourage parents to adopt the garden for a week in the summer, bringing their children with them to weed and harvest during the non-school season.

If you don't have a garden, consider purchasing books that parents can borrow. I recently read How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature by Scott D. Sampson, and LOVED it. It's filled with ideas for how parents can help their children at each stage of growth (early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence) become enamored by the natural world. He gives ideas for how parents can become "nature mentors" (like Rachel Carson advises), addresses the paradox of technology and the outdoors, and lists tons of other resources for parents and caregivers.

Another good resource is the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. He outlines the research behind the dramatic drop in time spent outdoors, and why it's bad for children's health and futures. This one is a little gloomier than How to Raise a Wild Child, but it's become a classic for parents and teachers who are worried about their children's connection to nature.

There are also TONS of resources available online, and I sometimes print this and attach them to my weekly family newsletter. Here are just a few you could include:

seasonal Family Play Plans, which give ideas for how to go outdoors and play each season

Wild Child: Rewilding Childhood, an online course that families can take to learn how to stimulate a sense of wonder and cultivate appreciation for the natural world!

These conversations might be hard to have at first, since parents are often worried about a myriad of things besides getting their kids outdoors more. But I believe it will help enormously to encourage parents in your mission to bring more joy and wonder into the lives of your students. Make sure to tell parents that they don't need to be nature experts to take their kids outdoors - it's less important to name all the plants on your hike, and more important that you are going on a hike together.

I woke up this morning full of excitement for my upcoming nine days of freedom (aka spring break!). And for some reason, even though it's only just turned to spring, I couldn't get summer plans out of my head. There's so much I could possibly do this summer. There's a master naturalist course I want to take, plus a yoga teacher training I got accepted to (!), as well as my summer grad school classes, some science-related professional development stuff through my school, and my summer job at the nature center. Plus J and I are hoping to take a trip to California to see the redwoods and Big Sur (!!).

So much to choose from, which is an awesome problem to have. But it seems as always that I'm taking on too much and won't be able to do it all without being a crazy busy crazy person. And summer is definitely NOT the time for being a crazy busy crazy person. It's supposed to be my season of relaxation.

So I'll have to do some thinking and schedule-balancing, and probably let a few of those things go for now. I need to get better at remembering my intention to simplify my life. To help me remember, I decided to put together a few links on intentional living for your viewing pleasure...

Why saying you want change is not enough. A conversation in this article, that his mentor has about truly wanting something, really rang true for me. I keep saying I want a simpler life, or enough money to travel, or more time to read, or to learn how to rock climb better. But I don't realign my priorities to make sure I do it.

A mentor of mine was interacting with a gentleman older than me when the man made this statement, “I want to buy a Corvette.”

My mentor responded to his desire quite frankly, “No you don’t.”

“What do you mean? Of course I do. I’d like to own a Corvette.”

My mentor responded with words I have never forgotten, “No, you don’t really want to buy a Corvette. You see, if you really wanted to buy a Corvette, you could buy a Corvette. You could sell your home and maybe also your business. Then, you would have enough money to buy a Corvette. You say you want to own a Corvette… but if you really wanted to buy a Corvette, you’d be changing your life to do exactly that.”

Amazing new podcast discovery! It's called Running on Om, and it's all about the mind/body/soul connection between running, yoga, mindfulness, and intention. How did I function without this podcast until now?

I was trying to avoid the major fad that is the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, because I'm freakishly organized already and don't need to be pushed any further in that direction. But then a good friend of mine convinced me to look at how the book recommends you get rid of possessions - by asking the question "Does this spark joy?" It seems silly, because items in your house don't really spark joy. But I looked at my closet with the lens of "does this piece of clothing make me feel joyful?" If the answer was no, I got rid of it. If the answer was "well I might wear this someday" or "I really like this color" or "I paid a lot for this dress," I still got rid of it. Lo and behold, I got rid of about one-fourth of my clothes in 15 minutes. It was awesome.

You guys you guys, I discovered the best thing!! I've been trying to figure out practical, not-overwhelming-or-hard-or-time-consuming ways to bring mindfulness into my classroom, and when I came across this artist, I realized it was made just for me. Or so I'd like to believe. Anyway, her name is Kira Willey, and she is a singer/songwriter and yoga person who wanted to bring more mindfulness into kids' lives. She has lots of albums filled with beautiful yoga-for-kids songs, but my absolute favorite is her new one, Mindful Moments for Kids. I highly recommend you get it.

The songs are about a minute long, and have names like "Candle Breath," "Imagine You're a Tree," and "Be a Bumblebee." They give short and simple directions for calming your body, breathing in and out deeply (sometimes like a bumblebee, sometimes like you're blowing out a candle), and centering your mind. The fun instructions ("pretend you're holding a cup of hot cocoa...take a small sip and say mmmmm as you breathe out") completely captivate my kids, and the songs get even the squirreliest bunch of kindergarteners to calm down and focus. The album has 32 different songs on it, so the kids always have a lot to choose from.

I especially like doing them when the class comes to the rug. If you think about it, transition times like coming to the rug are a really good time to take a minute for mindfulness. I realized recently that I don't allow my kids to have slow transitions from one thing to the next. When writing time is wrapping up, I say "okay time to come to the rug for science" and expect them to be cleaned up, seated and quiet within minutes. We rush our kids from subject to subject, from room to room, from area to area. But sometimes they need time to refocus on the new topic at hand, or the new role they are expected to play (before I was a writer, now I am a scientist). These mindful moments from Kira Willey are a perfect way to help them do just that.

Spring is coming! I've decided (even though I realize my confession borders on sacrilege, given the popularity of fall in the collective minds of millennials) that spring is my favorite season. Nothing gets me more excited about life than hearing that first mourning dove, watching snow melt from the branches, and feeling the warm spring sunshine on my face. So happy spring, and enjoy some links that have inspired me this week!

And last, a super interesting article that gives another reason why poverty is a barrier to healthy eating habits. Children need to try a new food at least 8 times before they learn to like it - and if you're strapped for cash, why would you bother buying a food that you know your child will reject 8 times in a row? Wasting food is not an option in many families, so kids don't get enough chances to try new fruits and vegetables. Enter...the school system! Just another reason why we should systematically educate kids on healthy eating habits in schools.

I have a new blog obsession, one that was recommended to me by Families for Justice, a local group I started working with to bring conversations about race to our community. The blog is called Raising Race Conscious Children, and is one of the best resources I've come across for learning how to talk about race, gender, and sexuality with young children. While I'm not a parent, I do, in a sense, have kids - my kindergarten students, every day for eight hours, all year long. Tough conversations arise when I spend time with my kids, and I've started going to this blog for inspiration and advice on how to work through these tough conversations.

For example, check out this post on what happened when the author's seven-year-old daughter encountered an act of sexism on her soccer team. A boy cut in front of her in line and said boys should go first. He also later told her it would be embarrassing if a girl beat a boy while playing soccer. Her daughter got upset and told him it wasn't nice.

On the way home, instead of shying away from the topic, her mom asked her daughter to explain what happened, and told her she was proud of her for standing up for herself. But the mom felt some unease when she realized that she didn't explain the root cause of this interaction - that the boy wasn't just being mean, he was being sexist.

So that night, the author "circles back" and brings it up with her daughter again. She does some courageous things in the conversation, including defining the word "sexism" for her daughter, and explaining that this probably won't be the last time she'll face a situation like this.

And instead of being fearful or upset, her daughter responds with courage too, and connects it to Rosa Parks standing up for what she believed in.

The author's experience was a powerful one, and confirms my belief that we need to talk about these issues with our young children, instead of pretending that they'll go away if we ignore them long enough. The conversations are tough, but necessary, for bringing social justice transformation to our families, classrooms, and communities.

My favorite line from the article:

"I don’t know if I found the right line that day, but I definitely grew. I grew in respect for my daughter and her ability to analyze what’s really going on. And I grew in my clarity that supporting our children in naming the truth of their own experiences isn’t likely to make them small or afraid. It’s much more likely to make large and courageous their capacity to act with agency in the world."

In my grad class we've been doing some readings about the importance of Socratic questioning in education. While I was initially turned off by the topic (what does Socrates have to do with teaching five-year-olds?), it turns out to be really relevant to teaching kindergarten. Socrates viewed inquiry and investigation as the best way to learn, as opposed to passive accumulation of skills and knowledge. I've long been an advocate for more play in the classroom, and it turns out that even 300 years ago, educators saw play as the best way for young children to learn. Check this out, from Martha Nussbaum's Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (emphasis my own):

German educator Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) conducted reforms of early education...that have changed the way young children in virtually all of the world's countries begin their schooling. For Froebel was the founder and theorist of the "kindergarten," the year before "regular" schooling begins in which children are gently encouraged to expand their cognitive faculties in an atmosphere of play and affection, and one that, in a Socratic spirit, emphasizes children's own activity as the source of their learning.

Froebel intensely disliked traditional models of education that viewed children as passive vessels into which the wisdom of the ages would be poured. He believed that education should focus on eliciting and cultivating the child's natural abilities through supportive play. The idea of the kindergarten is just this idea of a place where one learns and unfolds through play.

Modern kindergartens...[retain] the core idea that children learn to unfold themselves by active thought, reciprocity, and the active manipulation of objects...Children all over the world today owe much to his contribution, since the idea of a type of early education through play in an environment of sympathy and lovehas created kindergartens more or less everywhere.

So awesome! Kindergarten should still be about playing! Except the author goes on to say...

This healthy idea is under pressure in our world, as children are pressed to drill at skills earlier and earlier in life, often losing opportunities to learn through relaxed playing.

It's true. So much of my kindergarteners' day is NOT playing, and is instead structured learning experiences to make sure they acquire a set of skills that in order to be "college and career ready" (at age six!). Ugh.

What that means for me is that I'm going to cling to that 30 minutes of free play time in my schedule every day, and not feel guilty if I expand it.

This school year has been harder than most for me. I have a big class, lots of kids with lots of needs, and I feel like I'm constantly stressed out. For some reason, the pressures of teaching and taking care of my students, plus adhering to all the other expectations that come with teaching in an elementary school these days, have left me feeling exhausted - even more exhausted than a normal kindergarten year. I've had more moments of disillusion this year than I have in the past (Am I really cut out for being a teacher? Am I losing my ability to be patient with my kids? Should I find another profession?)

It's led me to a lot of soul searching. After lots of journaling, talking with colleagues, and reflecting, I've concluded is that yes, I still want to be a teacher, and am as dedicated as ever to teaching and reaching my students. But it's been quite a while since I've been able to step back and deeply appreciate those beautiful moments that come with teaching young children. Their sense of wonder, the joy they bring to the smallest of tasks, the lessons they teach me about happiness and humanity.

What I need are more strategies for making my days slower, happier, more joyful. Yes, stress will always be part of teaching. But if I learn how to manage this stress in a way that's healthy for both me and my students, I know that my days will be more joyful, and peaceful, again.

After lots of reading, I've figured out a potential strategy for managing this stress. Enter: mindfulness! I feel lucky to have jumped on the mindfulness bandwagon that is circulating the teaching field these days. Mindfulness in the classroom is a subtle but powerful concept that has brought hope back to the way I think about teaching. Our district requires us to do a professional development project each year, so I decided to take on mindfulness as my project this year. I plan to study mindfulness for teachers, students, and the curriculum - and share what I learn here.

The first lesson I've learned seems to be the most important: You can't teach mindfulness to your students without practicing mindfulness in your life first.

Yoga, meditation, and journaling are all habits I use to bring more mindfulness into my life. Others use running, biking, walking, or restorative breathing. I've also heard of people who write a word like "awareness," or a mantra like "breathe and let go," on a stone, and put it on their desk in their classroom. This reminds them to take a pause and notice their body, notice how they are feeling, notice what they need to recenter themselves.

My favorite resources for learning the basics of mindfulness in the classroom, and how to adapt it in your own life first, are listed below.

This book is written by a former teacher from India who now works on social-emotional development in the States. I love her short, informative chapters, her stories of the classroom, and her straightforward advice on bringing mindfulness into your life. She also provides an entire unit (geared towards 6th grade but adaptable for other ages) on mindfulness that would be perfect for the beginning of the year. I loved this book and it only took me about a week to read it.

This book was a longer read, and full of tons of strategies and habits for adapting more mindfulness into your life and classroom. This is a good one to read after you've had a basic introduction (maybe from the previous book I mentioned). The author really emphasizes how teaching is an emotional profession, much more than most jobs, and the stress level can be very high - and mindfulness strategies can really target the emotional stress that teachers experience every day.

I have to admit I haven't read this one yet! It's got a long waiting list at the library, so I'll get to it eventually! The author is pretty well known in the field as a mindfulness educator, and I've heard a few interviews with him (including this one from the podcast Present Moment: Mindfulness Practice and Science - another awesome resource for learning more). I have no doubt it'll be a good resource.

This was my first introduction to meditation and mindfulness. The author is well-known as one of the first to bring mindfulness meditation to a larger Western audience. The book is really easy to read, with short chapters that give lots of practical advice on how to develop a mindfulness practice. He has tons of other books, but this one is a sufficient introduction to developing the habit. It's also really cheap and you can often used copies at thrift stores!

Next week I'll share some of my tips on how to teach mindfulness to your students. And eventually I hope to share what I learn about the benefits of mindfulness and working towards a more peaceful classroom. Thanks for reading!